“The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.”
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Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.
The capacity you're thinking of is imagination without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.
Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.